The present invention pertains generally to systems and methods for producing weather reports including systems and methods for tracking the expected future paths of storms and other weather phenomenon, and, more particularly, to systems and methods for providing such weather reports and storm warnings to individuals and businesses, e.g., over computer networks such as the internet.
Most of the current weather and weather forecast information used by individuals and businesses is obtained by them from weather reports provided by local television and radio stations. Such reports are typically prepared by meteorologists at a television or radio station serving a particular geographical area, e.g., a large city and surrounding environs. The reports are based on current weather information available to the meteorologists, which may be provided by various local (e.g., local radar) and national (e.g., NEXRAD radar and weather satellite) weather information sources. A meteorologist may also employ computer implemented weather forecasting models in preparing a weather forecast report. A meteorologist may prepare and/or update such reports throughout the day, and such reports may be provided as part of periodic radio and/or television broadcasts. A person who is interested in the current or forecast weather conditions for a geographic location accesses such a weather report by tuning in to the television or radio broadcast of the report at the designated time.
If severe weather threatens a particular area, an emergency radio or television broadcast may be made to provide such information to the public immediately and, if necessary, continuously. For example, a television station may provide a graphic indication of the general location (e.g., county) and nature of severe weather (e.g., tornado and thunderstorm warnings, etc.) as part of its television broadcast, throughout the period during which severe weather threatens an area. Such severe weather or storm warnings may be generated from various different weather information sources and provided in various different manners to the public. For example, a television station may subscribe to National Weather Service weather wire information, which includes weather warning bulletins authored by the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center, and other related government agencies. The weather warning bulletins include tornado warnings, severe thunderstorm warnings, flash flood warnings, and the like. This information is typically employed by WxWarn, or other systems, for displaying the warning bulletins, e.g., as an overlay on a television broadcast.
NEXRAD weather radar weather information is also obtained from the government by many television stations. NEXRAD information includes a storm attributes table which defines storm cells and provides detailed information concerning the cells, including the characteristics of the cells (e.g., hail and vortex intensity and location, rain fall intensity, speed, etc.) as well as the position, direction, and speed of movement of the cells. A storm cell tracking and display system employed by the television station may use such NEXRAD data to determine the position of a storm and to derive a predicted storm path therefrom. Such a derived storm track may be displayed to viewers, e.g., as part of a severe weather update television report. Such a report may include a display indicating the time that a selected storm or storms is predicted to arrive at a particular city or town, based on the storm track derived from NEXRAD storm attribute information.
Government-provided NEXRAD radar data includes detailed information on storm cells, including detailed information on the characteristics of the cells, including their speed and direction of movement, contents (e.g., hail or tornadoes), etc. This detailed information is obtained by the NEXRAD radar system by preforming a volumetric radar radar scan of the atmosphere. A weather tracking and display system can expect to receive updated NEXRAD weather information no more often than every six (6) minutes. The speed and direction of movement of a severe weather cell can change significantly during this relatively long period between NEXRAD updates. Thus, storm warnings based on the predicted track of a storm cell will become increasingly inaccurate between NEXRAD updates, if NEXRAD information alone is relied upon to determine the predicted track of a storm cell. Local or remote live radar systems perform a much more rapid scan of the atmosphere, and are, therefore, able to provide more up-to-the-minute information on the current location of a severe storm weather cell. Since such live radar systems are significantly less expensive than NEXRAD radar systems, many television news and weather operations have their own live local radar systems, in addition to access to government provided NEXRAD data, which provides much more detailed storm attribute information. U.S. Pat. No. 6,339,747, entitled Weather Tracking and Display System and Method, which is assigned to the assignee of the present application, describes a system and method for employing such live radar information to update the detected position of NEXRAD defined storm cell attributes between NEXRAD updates. Such a system combines the detailed information describing the characteristics of a storm, provided by NEXRAD, with the up-to-the-minute information on the current location of a storm, provided by live radar, to provide more accurate storm warnings.
A limitation of conventional weather reports and storm warnings is that they are generalized over a relatively large geographic area. For example, a typical storm warning may indicate that severe weather, e.g., a tornado, thunderstorm, etc., is present or expected to arrive in a geographic area such as a county. Of course, such severe weather will arrive at different locations in the county at different times, and some areas of a county under a weather warning may not receive any severe weather at all. A county-wide storm warning, therefore, does not provide sufficient information for an individual to know whether or when to expect severe weather at his home, place of work, or other specific location of interest within the county. Televised weather reports which provide expected arrival times of severe weather at specific cities or other populated areas are also of limited value for many individuals. Such reports, which may employ NEXRAD information or NEXRAD information in combination with live radar information to provide accurate storm cell tracking, typically only provide arrival time information for a handful of populated areas in the path of a storm. Those in rural areas and smaller towns in the path of a storm must attempt to estimate on their own, from the graphics provided in the televised weather warning broadcast, if severe weather will reach their area and, if so, when. What is desired, therefore, is a system and method which provides personalized storm or other severe weather warnings to individuals or businesses which indicate whether or not a storm will reach an individual""s location of interest and, if so, when.
Another limitation of conventional televised or radio broadcast storm warnings is that such warnings provide information only on the types of storms which are deemed significant by the television or radio station providing the broadcast. If a televised storm warning provides information on all severe weather conditions (e.g., thunderstorms, hail, tornadoes, etc.) occurring in a television station""s service area, a viewer may be overwhelmed with information, and miss the particular severe weather information in which he is interested (e.g., a tornado headed toward his home). Alternatively, if a broadcast storm warning report includes information on only selected severe weather conditions, an individual may not be provided with storm warning information which would be valuable to him, and which is available to the television or radio station, but which is not provided in a storm warning report which is directed to a more general audience. Furthermore, conventional televised or radio broadcast storm warnings provide an amount of advanced storm warning which is selected by the television or radio station to satisfy a general audience. This may be too much or too little for any individual interested in when a storm will reach the individual""s location of interest. What is desired, therefore, is a system and method which allows an individual to select the particular types of severe weather conditions for which the individual desires a storm warning to be provided, and an amount of advanced warning which such a report will provide.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,018,699, to Baron, Sr. et al. describes a weather alert manager which receives meteorological data, e.g., NEXRAD data, which includes weather information defining storms within a relevant geographic area. The current position and predicted path of a storm is determined from the data and combined with a geographical grid to produce a storm profile indicating storm severity and if a storm is in or is likely to enter any geographical grid area. The storm profile may be distributed to remote units located within a particular grid area to provide storm warnings to individuals in such areas. For example, the remote unit may be a cellular phone or pager which is associated with a particular area, and which receives the storm profile to provide the appropriate warning when a storm is in or approaching that area. Such a system, however, does not allow an individual user to identify a particular location of interest for which the user desires storm warnings to be provided, nor does it allow a user to select the particular storm conditions, advanced warning time, etc. for such a location for which a storm warning is to be provided.
Advances in computer connectivity technology have allowed television and radio station meteorologists to provide access to their latest weather condition and forecast reports via computer over the Internet at any time desired. Thus, an individual need not try to catch the local television or radio broadcast of a weather report to get the latest weather information. An individual may be able to access weather reports or other outdoor information for both local and remote geographic locations via computer over the internet. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,498,987, entitled System and Method for Providing Personalized Weather Reports and the Like, and assigned to the assignee of the present application, describes a system and method for providing accurate personalized weather reports to individuals or businesses for individual user of locations of interests. Such personalized weather reports may be delivered to users over the Internet, via e-mail, via a pager or cellular telephone, etc. Such a system employs a highly accurate weather forecasting model to provide detailed weather forecast information for particular user locations of interest, from which the personalized weather reports are generated periodically, e.g., twice a day. However, a system which also provides personalized up-to-the-minute storm warnings to individuals and businesses during rapidly developing severe weather conditions using, e.g., timely weather radar information, is also desired.
The present invention provides a system and method for generating storm warnings which are precisely tailored automatically for a particular individual or business user""s geographic location of interest, e.g., home or work, and which may be provided automatically to the individual user or business. The present invention allows an individual to identify a particular geographic location for which the user desires a personalized storm warning to be provided, as well as to establish a storm profile, defining attribute characteristics of storms for which a storm warning is desired, and the amount of advanced warning which the personalized storm warning is to provide.
In accordance with the present invention, a user establishes an individualized user profile, in which the user may define a particular location of interest (e.g., home or work) and a contact address (e.g., e-mail address or pager number) to which a personalized storm warning is to be delivered. A user may also establish a storm profile, defining attribute characteristics of a storm for which the user desires a storm warning to be provided, and an amount of advanced warning to be provided by the personalized storm warning. A detailed and accurate storm track is generated. The storm track includes information describing a storm""s characteristics (severe weather conditions) as well as the current location and predicted track of movement of the storm. Such a storm track may be generated automatically from weather radar data, such as NEXRAD data, either alone, or in combination with local live weather radar information, and other available weather information. The generated storm track is compared to the individual user profile. For user profiles defining locations of interest within a predicted storm track, and if the storm track characteristics meet the storm attribute and advanced warning characteristics specified in the storm profile, a personalized storm warning is automatically generated. The personalized storm warning thus generated preferably identifies in detail the storm conditions approaching a user location of interest, and the predicted arrival time at that location. A personalized storm warning in accordance with the present invention may be provided directly to an individual or business, e.g., via e-mail, pager, cellular telephone, etc.
An exemplary system for providing personalized storm warnings in accordance with the present invention includes a main computer system, which may be implemented, for example, as part of a television or radio station news and weather reporting operation. The main computer system receives weather information from one or more weather information sources, e.g., NEXRAD weather radar information provided by the government, local live weather radar information, and other weather information from local and/or remote sensors. NEXRAD weather radar information includes detailed storm attribute information describing the characteristics of storm cells. The NEXRAD storm attribute information also includes information on the direction and speed of movement of storm cells, from which a predicted track of these storms may be generated. The main computer system includes software for generating a predicted storm track from such NEXRAD data, or, more preferably, from NEXRAD data in combination with local live radar information. The local live radar information, which is less detailed, but which provides updated storm cell positions much more often than NEXRAD information, may be used in combination with NEXRAD information to enhance the accuracy of the predicted storm cell tracks.
The main computer system preferably also includes a user profile generator. The user profile generator provides various user profile set-up menu user interfaces which allow a user to establish a user profile. These menus may be accessed by a user by use of, for example, a personal computer connected to the main system computer over a network such as the internet. Using such menus, the user establishes a personal user profile which includes a particular location of interest, e.g., home, vacation home, or work, for which the user would like a personalized storm warning to be provided, and a contact address, e.g., e-mail address or pager number, to which the personalized storm warning is to be delivered. The set-up menu user interface also allows a user to define a storm profile, including storm attribute conditions for which the user would like a personalized storm warning to be provided, and the amount of advanced warning (e.g., based on predicted storm cell arrival time at the user location of interest, or the distance of a storm cell from the user location of interest) which the personalized storm warning is to provide. User and storm profile information thus obtained is stored in a user profile data base.
Each time a storm track is generated or updated, the resulting storm track data is compared to the user profiles saved in the user profile database, and personalized storm warnings are generated automatically by a storm warning generator implemented in the main computer system. Personalized storm warnings are generated for each user location of interest which falls within a projected storm track, if the storm attribute characteristics and advanced warning limitations established by the user in the storm profile are satisfied by the characteristics of the generated storm track.
In accordance with the present invention, personalized storm warnings may be delivered to a user at the user contact address indicated in the user profile, and preferably include detailed information on the contents of an approaching storm, e.g., the types of severe weather that are approaching, as well as the predicted time of arrival of the storm at the specific user location of interest identified by the user in the user profile. Such detailed personalized storm warnings may be delivered automatically directly to a user""s contact address, e.g., in the form of an e-mail or phone message. Alternatively, or additionally, personalized storm warnings in accordance with the present invention may be provided at an internet web page accessible at a personalized web page address provided to the user.
A system and method in accordance with the present invention for providing personalized storm warnings based, e.g., on current weather radar information, may be combined with a system or method for providing more long-term personalized weather forecast reports based, e.g., on computer modeled weather data. In such a case, a user may establish a single user profile to obtain both personalized storm warning and weather forecast reports for a specific user location of interest, each of which may be delivered, at the appropriate times, to a user contact address identified by the user in the user profile, and/or to an internet web page accessible at a personalized web page address provided to a user.
Further objects, features, and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.